Ljudevit Gaj (; born Ludwig Gay; hu, Gáj Lajos; 8 August 1809 – 20 April 1872) was a Croatian
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...
,
politician
A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, ...
,
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
and
writer
A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, ...
. He was one of the central figures of the pan-Slavist
Illyrian movement.
Biography
Origin
He was born in
Krapina
Krapina (; hu, Korpona) is a town in northern Croatia and the administrative centre of Krapina-Zagorje County with a population of 4,482 (2011) and a total municipality population of 12,480 (2011). Krapina is located in the hilly Zagorje reg ...
(then in the
Varaždin County,
Kingdom of Croatia Kingdom of Croatia may refer to:
* Kingdom of Croatia (925–1102), an independent medieval kingdom
* Croatia in personal union with Hungary (1102–1526), a kingdom in personal union with the Kingdom of Hungary
* Kingdom of Croatia (Habsburg) (152 ...
,
Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire (german: link=no, Kaiserthum Oesterreich, modern spelling , ) was a Central- Eastern European multinational great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the realms of the Habsburgs. During its existence, ...
) on August 8, 1809.
His father Johann Gay was a German immigrant from
Hungarian Slovakia, and his mother was Juliana ' Schmidt, the daughter of a German immigrant arriving in the 1770s.
The Gays were originally of
Burgundian Huguenot
The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...
origin. They arrived in
Batizovce in present-day
Slovakia
Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the ...
in 16th or 17th century. Thence they became
serfs of
Mariassy de Markusfalva and
Batizfalva families in 18th century. As there were a lot of ethnic Germans in that area, the Gays were soon Germanised. Ljudevit's father originates from a branch that moved to the village of
Markušovce.
Ljudevit completed
high school
A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...
in Varaždin,
Zagreb
Zagreb ( , , , ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slop ...
and
Karlovac, and he studied
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...
in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
and Graz (graduated in 1828) and
law in
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population o ...
(1829-1831).
Orthography and other work
Gaj started publishing very early; his 36-page booklet on stately manors in his native district, written in his native German, appeared already in 1826 as ''Die Schlösser bei Krapina''.
In
Buda in 1830
Gaj's Latin alphabet was published ("Concise Basis for a Croatian-Slavonic Orthography"), which was the first common Croatian
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...
book (after the works of
Ignjat Đurđević and
Pavao Ritter Vitezović). The book was printed bilingually, in
Croatian and German. The Croatians used the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...
, but some of the specific sounds were not uniformly represented. Gaj followed the example of Pavao Ritter Vitezović and the
Czech orthography, using one letter of the Latin script for each sound in the language. He used
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
s and the
digraphs ''lj'' and ''nj''.
The book helped Gaj achieve nationwide fame. In 1834 he succeeded where fifteen years before
Đuro Matija Šporer had failed, i.e. obtaining an agreement from the royal government of the
Habsburg monarchy
The Habsburg monarchy (german: Habsburgermonarchie, ), also known as the Danubian monarchy (german: Donaumonarchie, ), or Habsburg Empire (german: Habsburgerreich, ), was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities ...
to publish a Croatian daily newspaper. He was known as an intellectual leader thereafter.
On 6 January 1835, ''Novine Horvatske'' ("The Croatian News") appeared, and on 10 January the literary supplement ''
Danicza horvatzka, slavonzka y dalmatinzka'' ("The Croatian,
Slavonia
Slavonia (; hr, Slavonija) is, with Dalmatia, Croatia proper, and Istria, one of the four historical regions of Croatia. Taking up the east of the country, it roughly corresponds with five Croatian counties: Brod-Posavina, Osijek-Bar ...
n, and
Dalmatia
Dalmatia (; hr, Dalmacija ; it, Dalmazia; see names in other languages) is one of the four historical regions of Croatia, alongside Croatia proper, Slavonia, and Istria. Dalmatia is a narrow belt of the east shore of the Adriatic Sea, str ...
n Daystar"). The "Novine Horvatske" were printed in
Kajkavian dialect until the end of that year, while "Danic
" was printed in
Shtokavian dialect along with Kajkavian.
In early 1836 the publications' names were changed to ''Ilirske narodne novine'' ("The Illyrian People's News") and ''
Danica ilirska'' ("The Illyrian Morning Star") respectively. This was because historians at the time hypothesised Illyrians had been Slavic and were the direct forefathers of the present-day South Slavs.
In addition to his intellectual work, Gaj was also a poet. His most popular poem was "
Još Hrvatska ni propala" ("Croatia is not in ruin yet"), which was written in 1833.
Death
Gaj died in
Zagreb
Zagreb ( , , , ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slop ...
,
Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia,
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
, in 1872 at the age of 62.
Linguistic legacy
The Latin alphabet used in the
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia an ...
language is credited to Gaj's ''Kratka osnova Hrvatskog pravopisa''.
Gaj followed the example of
Pavao Ritter Vitezović and the
Czech orthography, making one letter of the Latin script for each sound in the language. Following
Vuk Karadžić reform of Cyrillic in the early nineteenth century, Ljudevit Gaj in the 1830s performed the same operation on Latin, using the Czech system and producing a one-to-one symbol correlation between Cyrillic and Latin as applied to the Serbian or Croatian parallel system.
The
Slovenian alphabet, introduced in the mid-1840s, is also a variation of
Gaj's Latin alphabet, from which it differs by the lack of the letters ć and đ.
Personal
He married 26-year-old
Paulina Krizmanić, niece of an abbott, in 1842 at
Marija Bistrica. They had five children: daughter Ljuboslava, and sons Velimir, Svetoslav, Milivoje, and Bogdan.
Legacy
In 2008, a total of 211 streets in Croatia were named after Ljudevit Gaj, making him the fourth most common person eponym of streets in the country.
See also
*
Illyrian movement
*
Romantic nationalism
*
Croatian language
Croatian (; ' ) is the standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian pluricentric language used by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina, and other neighboring countries. It is the offici ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gaj, Ljudevit
1809 births
1872 deaths
People from Krapina
Croatian writers
Linguists from Croatia
Croatian publishers (people)
People of the Illyrian movement
Slavists
Croatian Austro-Hungarians
Croatian expatriates in Hungary
Croatian people of Slovak descent
Croatian people of German descent
Burials at Mirogoj Cemetery
Danube-Swabian people